[Fantastic Video is a regular Venus Patrol feature where we recap the goings-on of the 2012 installment of Austin’s Fantastic Arcade, the indie-game spinoff of Alamo Drafthouse’s genre film festival Fantastic Fest. You can find all the Fantastic Videos by clicking here, and find out more about Fantastic Arcade here!]

In this latest installment of Fantastic Video, we’re joined by Paolo ‘Molleindustria‘ Pedercini — the peerless leader of using games as socio-political commentary — and Jim Munroe, artist, novelist, filmmaker, indie game creator (who you may recall from his latest interactive fiction work, Guilded Youth) and co-founder of Toronto indie-collective Hand Eye Society.

The two discuss their latest game, Unmanned, an accessibly-light-hearted but ultimately sobering and prescient investigation of the life of drone pilots, which was in part an attempt to answer the question “how do you make a videogame about war, when war already has become so videogame-like?”

The hour long video also includes an in-depth discussion on Phone Story, Pedercini’s commentary on the practices and social repercussions of manufacturing the technology we use every day — specifically, our ubiquitous iPhones, which itself was presented as an iPhone minigame collection that was ultimately banned from the App Store, later resurfacing on the Android marketplace.

As a bonus, below the fold you’ll also find Pedercini’s “reverse propaganda” machinima film “Welcome to the desert of the real”, referenced in the video above and discussed at much greater length here by researcher Simon Ferrari.

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Not to get too event-heavy with the day, but there are a few more events worth not-missing this weekend, starting with Arse Elektronika, now in its sixth year and coming to San Francisco Thursday, September 27th, through Sunday, September 30th.

The conference, organized by Johannes Grenzfurthner & Günther Friesinger of Austrian art/game team monochrom (more on them back here), along with curator and Kokoromi member Heather Kelley, is centered on the interplay between “sex, technology, games, and culture”, and will include lectures, workshops, and the Prixxx Arse Elektronika 2012 Awards, “an unobjectionable award for sex machines, orgasmotrons and teledildonics”.

Most notably, this year’s conference will see talks and game demonstrations from familiar faces including Heather Kelley — who created the “intuitive and stylish vibrator interface” OhMiBod Remote for iPhone with Kokoromi’s Damien Di Fede & Tiger Style’s Amanda Williams, as well as Molleindustria‘s Paolo Pedercini, Santa Ragione‘s Pietro Righi Riva (whose Awkward Sex Game is pictured at top, and who now has the amazing honor of owning AwkwardSex.com) and a whole boatload more who you can see here.

The full schedule and lineup is available at the Arse Elektronika website.